Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

Fieldnotes

taken from the information board:

Devils dough trough
Neolithic grave site

The builders of the megalithic tombs
In northern Germany, the megalithic tombs belong to the legacy of the so-called funnel beaker culture, named after the typical shape of their pottery. This population began in the Neolithic period from about 3,500 BC. also in our country, to practice agriculture and livestock. With this they finished the oldest and longest period of human history, the time of hunter-gatherer cultures, and introduced the sedentary way of life.

From the study of flower pollen we know today that it was 2-3°C warmer then today. There were large oak mixed forests on whose clear edges, near the stream or river, with stone axes the forest was cleared and fields and settlements were created. The most important crop was cereals, whereby only those species were cultivated, which came in the course of 5,000 years with the spreading of the rural way of life from Near East to Central and Northern Europe. These included the wheat varieties einkorn and wild emmer as well as barley.

The livestock can be retraced from individual bone finds. In the 4th millennium BC after that, cattle and pigs and, also imported from Southeastern Europe, sheep and goats were bred.